Article link via Michael SpechtWhen we've only just stopped laughing at Senator Alston's "discovery" of amazing technology (wireless internet), Helen Coonan has proved once again that Australian politicians are out of touch with the technical needs and resources in the community.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Everybody in metropolitan areas around Australia is happy with the speed of their broadband?

SENATOR HELEN COONAN: Well, they ought to be in Sydney, Melbourne,
Adelaide, Brisbane certainly and Perth. They should be reasonably happy
with their speed of broadband if they have ADSL 2, plus there are nine
providers that already provide these speeds. So it is available, it is
competitive and it doesn't have to depend on Telstra.

Helen Coonan, I AM NOT HAPPY with my shitty ISDN connection in a large, established South Eastern suburb of Melbourne. This is the best connection I can get here. A measly 128Kbps.My friend in Hong Kong has a connection that I can't even imagine using. I can barely download podcasts with this heap of junk on a crap network that should have been upgraded in the 1990s.

Australia is being crippled by the government's lack of foresight. Quit blaming Telstra for everything, get your act together or watch your people leave for better-wired shores.

I want fibre to my home, not the bloody node. Recycle the copper cable and move on people.

Attention Data, attention filtering, smart agent, personal relevancy, whatever you call
it, it's about saving time and mental grunt work. You know what you
like, you know what you don't like. Why bother with the stuff you don't
like.

The Alpha release is great (you need .NET 2.0 runtime). The Version I have is 0.2.118.0

Developers, there's a Touchstone competition you may be interested in:Write an Input or Output adapter for Touchstone, the community votes, and you could win an XBOX 360 or one of four iPod Nanos. They've even put up some ideas for adapters, if you can't decide on one.

Something else that I think would be great with Touchstone is a brand management customer relationship interface. So many businesses are now using the web to build their brand, products and online presence
relationship with their customers, having a quick interface to monitor
this would be fantastic tool for start-ups and supporters of the Cluetrain Manifesto.

If you haven't got yourself an Alpha invite to Touchstone, ping me and tell me why you want one.

Forget what he does for a second, and think about this: he is a 67 year old man, not considering immediate retirement, but announcing to Australia that he's planning to extend his career even further. Why wouldn't he? He's fit, he's capable, he's experienced. As our population ages and our workforce numbers decline, we need these Boomers. We need them to work, pay tax and live independent lives. So if you're employing people right now, go back to that pile of over 50s you dismissed and take another look, you're wasting a valuable Australian resource.Oh, and employees are already talking about you, yes you, the employer who doesn't want older workers. When the workforce dries up and you're begging for workers, don't be surprised if this comes back to bite you. The workforce is changing, workers are picking and choosing jobs (and employers) even now. Consider yourselves on notice.